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Seasteading is the creation of permanent dwellings in international waters, so-called seasteads, that are independent of established governments. No one has yet created a structure on the high seas that has been recognized as a sovereign state. Proposed structures have included modified cruise ships, refitted oil platforms, and custom-built floating islands. [1]
Some proponents say seasteads can "provide the means for rapid innovation in voluntary governance and reverse environmental damage to our oceans ... and foster entrepreneurship." [2] Some critics fear seasteads may function more as a refuge for the wealthy to avoid taxes or other obligations. [3]
While seasteading may guarantee some freedom from unwanted rules, high seas are being regulated, in particular in terms of cruise ship industry. [4]
The term seasteading is a blend of sea and homesteading , and dates back to the 1960s. [5]
Nomadic ocean life has been practiced for millenia by so-called sea nomad peoples, particularly around Southeast Asia. [7]
Venice, while built on stilts, like similar settlements to its North, East or South, has been identified as an early example of seasteading, not only as a long standing maritime settlement, but also as the center of the historic independent state of the Republic of Venice. [8]
Dormitory ships, but also other structures, such as oil platforms have been housing people relatively stationary at sea, and has been used for being claimed, after being abandoned, as micronations.
Many architects and firms have created designs for floating cities, including Vincent Callebaut, [9] [10] Paolo Soleri [11] and companies such as Shimizu, Ocean Builders [12] and E. Kevin Schopfer. [13]
Marshall Savage discussed building tethered artificial islands in his 1992 book The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps , with several color plates illustrating his ideas.
A 1998 essay by Wayne Gramlich attracted the attention of Patri Friedman. [14] The two began working together and posted their first collaborative book online in 2001. [15] Their book explored many aspects of seasteading from waste disposal to flags of convenience. This collaboration led to the creation of the non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI) in 2008.
As an intermediate step, the Seasteading Institute has promoted cooperation with an existing nation on prototype floating islands with legal semi-autonomy within the nation's protected territorial waters. On 13 January 2017, the Seasteading Institute signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with French Polynesia to create the first semi-autonomous "seazone" for a prototype, [16] [17] but later that year political changes driven by the French Polynesia presidential election led to the indefinite postponement of the project. [18] French Polynesia formally backed out of the project and permanently cut ties with Seasteading on 14 March 2018. [19]
The first single-family seastead was launched near Phuket, Thailand by Ocean Builders in March 2019. [20] [21] Two months later, the Thai Navy claimed the seastead was a threat to Thai sovereignty. [22] In 2019, Ocean Builders said it will be building again in Panama, with the support of government officials. [23] As of 2022, the project's status is uncertain.
In April 2019, the concept of floating cities as a way to cope with rising oceans was included in a presentation by the United Nations program UN-Habitat. As presented, they would be limited to sheltered waters. [24]
A nonprofit organization that has held several seasteading conferences and started The Floating City Project, which is proposed to locate a floating city within the territorial waters of an existing nation. Attempts to reach an agreement with French Polynesia ended in 2018. [25]
A proposal to build a "floating island" with a luxury hotel in Jounieh north of the Lebanese capital Beirut, was stalled as of 2015 because of concerns from local officials about environmental and regulatory matters. [26] [27]
Blueseed was a company aiming to float a ship near Silicon Valley to serve as a visa-free startup community and entrepreneurial incubator. Blueseed founders Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija met when both were employees of The Seasteading Institute. The project planned to offer living and office space, high-speed Internet connectivity, and regular ferry service to the mainland [28] [29] but as of 2014 the project was "on hold", [30] and was later described as "failed" due to lack of investors and possible trouble with the Startup Visa Bill before the US Congress, which would make the concept obsolete.
A project which got as far as the purchase of a ship was MS Satoshi, purchased (as Pacific Dawn) in 2020 by Ocean Builders Central, to become a floating residence in the Gulf of Panama; however, after failing to obtain insurance for the proposed operation, the ship was resold in 2021 for cruise operations. [4]
Historical predecessors and inspirations for seasteading include:
Cruise ships are a proven technology, and address most of the challenges of living at sea for extended periods of time. However, they're typically optimized for travel and short-term stay, not for permanent residence in a single location.
Examples:
Platform designs based on spar buoys, similar to oil platforms. [35] In this design, the platforms rest on spars in the shape of floating dumbbells, with the living area high above sea level. Building on spars in this fashion reduces the influence of wave action on the structure. [36]
Examples:
There are numerous seastead designs based around interlocking modules made of reinforced concrete. [40] Reinforced concrete is used for floating docks, oil platforms, dams, and other marine structures.
Examples:
A single, monolithic structure that is not intended to be expanded or connected to other modules.
Examples:
Seasteading has been identified as "techno-colonialism", continuing settler colonialism at sea. [47] [48] Others argue that building a new government is much more difficult than advocates realize. [49] Also, seasteads would be at risk of political interference from nation states. [50]
On a logistical level, without access to culture, travel, restaurants, shopping, and other amenities, seasteads could be too remote and too uncomfortable to be attractive to potential long-term residents. [50] Building seasteads to withstand the rigors of the open ocean may prove uneconomical. [49] [50]
Seastead structures may blight ocean views, their industry or farming may deplete their environments, and their waste may pollute surrounding waters. Some critics believe that seasteads will exploit both residents and the nearby population. [49] Others fear that seasteads will mainly allow wealthy individuals to escape taxes, [3] or to harm mainstream society by ignoring other financial, environmental, and labor regulations. [3] [49]
Seasteading has been imagined many times in novels, from Jules Verne's 1895 science-fiction book Propeller Island (L'Île à hélice) about an artificial island designed to travel the waters of the Pacific Ocean, to the 2003 novel The Scar , which featured a floating city named Armada. It has been a central concept in some movies, notably Waterworld (1995), and in TV series such as Stargate Atlantis , which had a complete floating city. It is a common setting in video games, forming the premise of the Bioshock series, Brink , and Call of Duty: Black Ops II ; and in anime, such as Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet which takes place mainly on a traveling city made of an interconnected fleet of ocean ships. A satirical take on seasteading in the context of human extinction is depicted in the Love, Death & Robots episode "Three Robots: Exit Strategies". [51]
A micronation is a political entity whose representatives claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by any sovereign state. Micronations are classified separately from de facto states and quasi-states; they are also not considered to be autonomous or self-governing as they lack the legal basis in international law for their existence. The activities of micronations are almost always trivial enough to be ignored rather than disputed by the established nations whose territory they claim—referred to in micronationalism as macronations. Several micronations have issued coins, flags, postage stamps, passports, medals and other state-related items, some as a source of revenue. Motivations for the creation of micronations include theoretical experimentation, political protest, artistic expression, personal entertainment and the conduct of criminal activity. The study of micronationalism is known as micropatriology or micropatrology.
An oil platform is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platforms will also have facilities to accommodate the workers, although it is also common to have a separate accommodation platform linked by bridge to the production platform. Most commonly, oil platforms engage in activities on the continental shelf, though they can also be used in lakes, inshore waters, and inland seas. Depending on the circumstances, the platform may be fixed to the ocean floor, consist of an artificial island, or float. In some arrangements the main facility may have storage facilities for the processed oil. Remote subsea wells may also be connected to a platform by flow lines and by umbilical connections. These sub-sea facilities may include one or more subsea wells or manifold centres for multiple wells.
Offshore construction is the installation of structures and facilities in a marine environment, usually for the production and transmission of electricity, oil, gas and other resources. It is also called maritime engineering.
Floating city may refer to:
Operation Atlantis was a project started by Werner Stiefel in 1968 aiming to establish a new, libertarian nation in international waters. The operation launched a ferro-cement boat on the Hudson River in December 1971 and piloted it to an area near the Bahamas. Upon reaching its destination, it sank in a hurricane. After a number of subsequent failed attempts to construct a habitable sea platform and achieve sovereign status, the project was abandoned.
Very large floating structures (VLFSs) or very large floating platforms (VLFPs) are artificial islands, which may be constructed to create floating airports, bridges, breakwaters, piers and docks, storage facilities, wind and solar power plants, for military purposes, to create industrial space, emergency bases, entertainment facilities, recreation parks, mobile offshore structures and even for habitation. Currently, several different concepts have been proposed for building floating cities or huge living complexes. Some units have been constructed and are presently in operation.
Subsea technology involves fully submerged ocean equipment, operations, or applications, especially when some distance offshore, in deep ocean waters, or on the seabed. The term subsea is frequently used in connection with oceanography, marine or ocean engineering, ocean exploration, remotely operated vehicle (ROVs) autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), submarine communications or power cables, seafloor mineral mining, oil and gas, and offshore wind power.
Jurisdictional arbitrage is the practice of taking advantage of discrepancies between competing legal jurisdictions. It takes its name from arbitrage, the practice in finance of purchasing a good at a lower price in one market and selling it at a higher price in another. Just as in financial arbitrage, the attractiveness of jurisdiction arbitrage depends largely on its transaction costs, here the costs of switching legal service providers from one government to another.
Patri Friedman is an American libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, and theorist of political economy. He founded The Seasteading Institute, a non-profit that explores the creation of sovereign ocean colonies.
Sean Hastings is an entrepreneur, cypherpunk author, and security expert.
A seascraper, also known as a waterscraper, is a proposed large building which will function as a floating city. It would generate its own energy through wave, wind, current, solar, etc. and produce its own food through farming, aquaculture, hydroponics, etc. The term "Seascraper" is an analogous derivative of "Skyscraper".
Joe Quirk is an American author originally from Westfield, New Jersey. His latest book is Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians. Quirk is also president of the non-profit Seasteading Institute.
Ocean colonization is the exploitation, settlement or territorial claim of the ocean and the oceanic crust.
Blueseed is a Palo Alto, California-based startup accelerator. It began as a seasteading venture.
Max Marty is an entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, who co-founded the seed accelerator project Blueseed with Dario Mutabdzija and Dan Dascalescu. He was previously Director of Business Strategy at The Seasteading Institute.
Dan Dăscălescu is a Romanian-American entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, who co-founded the ship-based seed accelerator project Blueseed in an attempt to allow entrepreneurs to start companies near Silicon Valley without US visa restrictions. He is also a public speaker and former software engineer at Google and Yahoo! and ambassador for The Seasteading Institute, a think tank researching ocean communities.
Dario Mutabdzija is an American entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley, who co-founded the seed accelerator project Blueseed. He was previously Director of Legal Strategy at The Seasteading Institute. He is now head of business development at Israeli startup PayKey.
Ocean development refers to the establishing of human activities at sea and use of the ocean, as well as its governance.
The Seasteading Institute(TSI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization formed to facilitate the establishment of autonomous, mobile communities on seaborne platforms operating in international waters (a proposed practice called seasteading). It was founded by Wayne Gramlich and Patri Friedman on April 15, 2008.
Ephemerisle is an annual week-long gathering every July on the water in the Sacramento Delta.
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